Chapter 17 - Beth

When playing the prisoner, Beth realized it was too easy to fall back into the melancholy and despair she'd first experienced when arriving at the White Winter house. Even with Jonah's constant and cheerful banter through the door and Devon's regular, if clandestine, visits, it was hard to remember that it was just an act now, a charade to achieve their ultimate goals.

Each time Devon returned to her room, she searched his face for signs that it was still an act for him as well, that he was not playing her for a fool. When he left, it was impossible to avoid believing the worst. Around and around, she went, trapped in her room and in her mind. She was desperate for him to stay longer, angry when he couldn't, and spiteful when he came back to her at last.

The days were running into each other. She found she spent most of her time asleep, lying down on her bed to read, only to find, hours later, the book strewn on the floor and the sun lower in the sky. Jonah would wake her to tell her it was dinner time, and it was impossible, she'd insist, since she'd only fallen asleep a moment ago.

She blamed it on the isolation and the way she could exhaust herself, running circles in her mind, questioning Devon's intentions, feelings, and plan. Sitting on the windowsill, one of the few places in the room she could guarantee she wouldn't fall asleep in, she felt those early urges return. To run away. To get a message, somehow, to Adria. To be back with the Rosewoods.

Devon knocked at the door sometime after dinner, carrying her plate and his own. He sent Jonah away and shut the door behind him.

"Do you eat with the others and then have a second meal with me?" Beth asked, taking the plates and setting them on her desk. Their new tradition.

"Have to keep up appearances," he said, pulling her chair out for her. Part of the tradition was the mock seriousness of it, acting like they were out for a date. "Besides, I need my energy."

"At your age?" She smirked, eyeing him up and down. "Hardly a growing boy."

Besides silver strands threading through his brown hair, there was little to belie his age. Creases that wrinkled at the corners of his eyes when he smiled, yes, but the sparkle of gold in those eyes pulled all the attention. His taut chest might have belonged to that of a college athlete. She could hardly keep from wanting him each time she looked at him.

He scowled but kissed her all the same. "If I had known I was in for a lifetime of mockery, I might have found someone older."

"A lifetime? If you're lucky," she said.

"Very lucky," he agreed. He sat down beside her and filled her in on the day, beginning with an excellent impression of an old-timey radio anchor to make her laugh. It always did.

"Now tell me seriously, is Emma on the warpath?" she asked when their laughter died down.

"She's only just returned home from scouting. I sent her out just so she wouldn't have time to cause too much trouble, and we got the message out to the Rosewoods today." She noticed that he pushed his plate away, not entirely clear, and stretched his legs out long in front of him. He always seemed too large for her room, after so much time spent alone in it.

Beth sat up, food forgotten. "And did they respond?"

"Not yet. I'm sure they'll need time to think it over and talk it over before they send anything back. It could be days, it could be weeks."

"Weeks?" Beth's voice came out more strained than she'd wanted it to. She looked around the room, frantic, feeling the walls close in even smaller.

Devon knelt in front of her chair and took her head in his hands. Even kneeling, he was tall enough to kiss her. He planted soft kisses on the corners of her mouth and up her cheek.

"We'll figure it out, right? If it's more than another two or three days, we'll make up a new story that gives you more freedom. We'll figure it out." He leaned his forehead against hers and they breathed like that, in and out, slowly, deeply, until her heartbeat calmed to a steady pace and the walls receded.

"Right. It's just that I'm losing my mind here already, and I think all I do is sleep, "she broke off, noticing him staring at her. "What is it? What's wrong?"

He cocked his head to the side, seeming to listen for something. She watched him, confused. Nothing in the room had caught his attention, and she hadn't heard anything from outside, but he was alert like a dog on a hunting trail.

"You smell different." His voice was dazed, slow, and thick like honey.

"Excuse me?" Beth asked, offended. She'd showered that day, put on fresh clothes. If she smelled like anything, it was the room she was trapped in, and she opened the windows daily for fresh air. Her own sensitive nose smelled nothing but that outside breeze, Devon's spice, and the leftover dinner.

There was a look on his face, unlike anything she'd seen before, all wide-eyed excitement, and an almost goofy grin.

"Beth." He said, pulling back to look at her, still on his knees, "I think you're pregnant."

Reflexively, Beth's hands flew to her stomach. She pressed the area with her palms and found it, of course, as flat as ever. It hadn't been that long since they'd had sex. Could he be right?

"W-what? How could you know that?" She grabbed her planner from her desk and flipped through the pages, tracking her period—there was not much else to fill the pages these days—but she wasn't due to bleed for a while. "There's no way to tell yet but, I couldn't be, right? After just those few times?"

They'd filled their days with it in the cabin, between sun-soaked swims and hikes up the hills. Her skin had felt aflame, blazing with a need for him. She'd find him making coffee in the kitchen, and her body would take over, dragging him to the table, fumbling with his clothes. Only after he'd filled her did she feel that scratching, desperate need fade. A temporary relief. Shortly after, she'd draw him down over her again.

He pulled her out of the chair and wrapped her in a full-bodied hug, her feet leaving the ground. "I can smell it on you, a change in your scent. Subtle, but there's nothing else it could be."

She buried her face in the crook of his neck and held him tight. Emotions stormed inside of her. Disbelief warred with trepidation, but above it all, excitement. Watching Adria's pregnancy had filled her with the certainty that she wanted motherhood for herself, though she'd been in no hurry to achieve it.

She'd had no mate then, nor any real prospect of one. The idea of pregnancy had been a distant thing, a quiet longing set aside for the future. Now, it was here, and her circumstances were anything but the stable bliss she'd imagined for this time.

Could she bring a child into this tangled mess? A White Winter child, no less? But no, she couldn't think of it like that. This baby was hers, Devon's, and no one else's.

"Are you okay, Beth? Is this unwelcome news?" He set her down gently and stepped back to take her in, anxiously scanning her face for information. "I thought since you, since we…"

Beth forced herself to speak before Devon could spiral too deeply into doubt. "It's not unwelcome, but, you must agree, this is not the easiest time for having a baby. So much remains up in the air."

"Don't worry about that now," he said, reaching to pull her close again, hands on her hips. "Right now, let's just celebrate our baby. Our future. We'll keep it to ourselves until things have settled down."

His enthusiasm was catching. He seemed overjoyed at the news, and despite her concerns, it was impossible not to let the excitement creep in. She touched her stomach again, wishing she could feel the life just beginning there.

"Are you ready to be a father?" Beth asked, realizing it was a question she should've asked before they'd had sex. Mating for the pack's benefit was one thing, and being a father was another.

Devon's eyes sparkled gold. "More than ready."

"You don't think it's too soon?"

He tugged at the streak of grey in his hair, blew out an exaggerated breath. "Well, I'm not getting any younger, as you like to remind me."

"You'll put a double meaning into them calling you their old man," Beth laughed.

"That's it," said Devon, scooping Beth up under his arm like a football. She squealed and laughed, protesting as he headed for the open window. "I've had enough of your lip."

She squirmed free and flung herself at him, determined to take him down. He caught her, and they both stumbled back against the wall, his large body softening their impact.

"You'll never get enough of it," she said smugly, kissing him.

He held her close and said, without a hint of humor, "No, I won't."

***

Beth waited for Devon in the garden. She and Jonah were on hands and knees, weeding one of the beds, while dragonflies buzzed around the pond, landing on the tips of reeds and, occasionally, the flowers in front of her.

"My hands are filthy," Jonah complained, tugging off his gloves and sitting back to inspect his fingers. "What is the point of gloves if the dirt just goes right through them?"

"Well, look at the rest of the stuff that's not going through them, like all these worms." Beth had been amused to learn that despite Jonah's interest in gardening for the sake of fresh produce, he did not enjoy the act itself. She'd been listening to his complaints all morning.

"I don't want to look at that, thank you," he said, tossing the gloves next to his shovel and getting to his feet. He brushed dirt from his knees and looked around. "Devon is not the most punctual man, is he?"

She checked her watch. Only two minutes past the hour. "Jonah, he's two minutes late. Why don't you sit over there, and I'll finish up here?"

He didn't need to be asked twice. Stretching out on the bench, he pulled a folded paperback from his back pocket and started to read. Beth worked in the quiet. She'd asked Devon to reduce the hours of the gardener they had hired before she'd arrived, hoping that taking over the work would give her a purpose during her isolation.

Pulling weeds from the dirt, she imagined the difficulties of her life being so easy to expel. Yank, there goes Emma. Yank, the Rosewoods, and the White Winters learn to coexist. Yank, Adria is there to visit. If only. Her problems were deep-rooted and tangled around each other, inextricably linked.

"Woah, hate to be anything green when you've got that look on your face."

Beth looked up to find Devon approaching with a tray of ice-cold glasses. She noted with envy that his skin had tanned to bronze in this warmer weather, while hers had only gotten more freckled.

"Wait till I start using these," she warned, grabbing the pair of long-bladed shears from her gardening tote. There was a dogwood in desperate need of trimming.

Devon set the tray down a safe distance away and held up his hands in surrender. "Are we arming the prisoners now, Jo?"

"Huh?" Jonah looked up from his book. "Oh, hey, Dev. Why do you think I'm all the way over here?"

"Laziness, probably," Devon said, handing a glass to Jonah before bringing one over to Beth. "It's looking… sparse. Is that the goal here? If so, excellent work, you two."

Beth took a sip from the glass, delighted to find that it was strawberry lemonade. "This is delicious. Did you make this?" She asked Devon.

Jonah snorted. "No, I did. You're welcome."

"Could've let me get a little credit here," Devon muttered, "some friend."

Beth handed him a shovel. In his grip, it looked child-sized. "You'll have to earn your credits. Start digging up those weeds. And yes, it has to look sparse before we can add the new plants. We need a fresh start."

Devon dug around the edges of the weeds, making quick work of the more deep-rooted ones that Beth had been sweating over. His forearms flexed in the most distracting way. Beth found herself staring more than weeding.

"Want some help over there?" Devon offered, pointing at the weeds still overflowing Beth's section. She really hadn't gotten much work done since Devon had arrived. "You shouldn't do too much, you know."

Beth glanced over her shoulder at where Jonah was still lying, head in his book. Hopefully, he hadn't heard that remark. They still hadn't told him about the pregnancy, and though they trusted Jonah, one more person knowing was one more chance of the secret getting out.

"I think I can handle a little weeding." She attacked the weeds with renewed vigor, though she was secretly pleased by his concern.

Each day, he came to her with a new tidbit gleaned from his internet searches into fatherhood. He'd already taught her about the importance of back sleeping and the necessity of a blanketless crib. He had amassed a shopping list three pages long of things the baby must have before it arrived. His e-reader was full of books about babies and how to be the best father.

He had confessed to her, late one night as they'd laid in bed together, that he was terrified, not of the baby, but of messing up, of being a father as terrible as the one he'd had. The fear cropped up again and again, no matter how she reassured him. Privately, Beth believed that it was that very fear that would ensure he was a good father.

"A garden party, and no one invited me?" Emma waltzed into the garden, wearing a sunhat, crochet dress, and oversized sunglasses.

Covered in dirt and wearing faded work clothes, Beth had never felt dingier. She brushed at the smear of mud on the front of her overalls but only succeeded in making it larger.

"I can't imagine why we forgot your invitation," Devon drawled.

Jonah sat up, making room for Emma on the bench. "You look nice, Em. Are you going out?"

She reclined on the bench, crossing her legs daintily. "Maybe I'm just dressing up for you." She batted her eyelashes at Jonah, and he flushed pink.

Beth rolled her eyes. He couldn't stop twisting himself around her finger, no matter how many times she showed him her true colors. It was a marvel, she thought, what people would overlook when a beautiful woman asked them to.

"Do you need something?" Devon asked, standing up and putting himself in between Beth and Emma.

Emma plucked Jonah's lemonade from his hand and took a drink, mouth puckering. "Would be better with a splash of rum. And no, dear brother, I'm just here for a visit. I haven't seen our beloved luna in so long, you know, I just wanted to check up on her. How are you doing, Beth? I see they've let you out of your ivory tower."

Sweet as it was, she still didn't want Devon fighting her battles for her. She faced Emma and tried to smile, telling herself that maybe the woman's intentions were not evil this time. Maybe Jonah wasn't the only fool.

"I'm doing well, thank you. Doesn't Jonah make the best lemonade?" Beth wrapped her hands tightly around the glass. Under Emma's cool glare, she always felt like a student called in front of a teacher.

Emma looked her up and down. "We used to have a gardener, you know. You don't have to wallow around in the muck, unless you like that sort of thing. Maybe that's something the Rosewoods do? I don't mean to mock your traditions. Only I thought they were werewolves, not pigs. They tend to squeal a bit like pigs, though, right?"

It was just bait. Beth felt heat creep up her neck that had nothing to do with the sun beating down on it. She imagined the stain it would leave, were she to throw her lemonade at Emma in her pristine white dress.

"Still Emma, I see," Beth said, turning away. She'd rather spend hours weeding than a minute in conversation with that woman.

"Always, my sweet little Rose—"

Emma broke off mid-sentence. Surprised, Beth turned around and saw her standing, head cocked in a gesture so similar to her brother's that the momentary resemblance made Beth's head spin.

Her lips twisted in a frown. She strode forward, stopped only by Devon's outstretched arm catching her across her stomach.

"What the hell, Emma? You look more insane than usual." Devon shoved her lightly backward.

Emma shook her head as if to clear it. She was fixated on Beth, too focused to push Devon's arm away.

"You're pregnant," she said like a curse. "Devon, your bitch is pregnant."

Time seemed to slow. Beth watched Jonah's mouth drop open in surprise, Devon's hand twitching into a claw-like grip on Emma's shirt, and Emma's face twitching into outrage. Then, Emma lunged. Devon's grip was too loose to hold her, or maybe he hadn't predicted the ferocity of her attack.

Beth swung her arms in front of herself, stumbling backward. It was the stumble that saved her, her heel catching on the edging of the garden, taking her down hard on her hip under the reach of Emma's grasping hand. She bit her tongue, tasting blood.

Jonah and Devon grabbed hold of Emma and dragged her back, pushing her forcefully down onto the bench. She laughed it off, as if it had been a moment of delusion, but her eyes said otherwise as they landed again on Beth.

"I don't know what came over me," she said, flipping her hair out of her face with a jerk of her chin, arms still pinned by the two men.

Devon let her go and rushed over to help Beth to her feet. She'd have a nasty bruise on her hip, and her pride was bruised, but it could've been worse. Beth pulled free of Devon's anxious ministrations, marched over to Emma, and slapped her across the face.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" She spat at the women, as Jonah tightened his grip on Emma. Her face was pink from the slap, but it had done little to mollify Beth.

"Are you going to let her just hit me like that, when I can't even defend myself?" Emma looked past Beth, glaring daggers at Devon.

Devon shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets. "You deserve a lot more than that, the way I see it."

It was going to be a sticking point with Devon, Beth knew that in her heart, but she had run out of hope that Emma could ever stay part of the pack with Beth as the luna. Ultimately, he would have to choose between his sister and his mate. He had walked the tightrope between them for so long, but it couldn't last forever.

Beth pressed her hands to her stomach and forced herself to breathe deep, slow, and steady breaths.

"Congratulations, you two," Jonah piped in. "I'm practically going to be an uncle."

"You're pathetic, Jonah," Emma said, whipping her hand around. "Some Rosewood bitch gets knocked up, and you're ready to welcome the bastard into the family? In so many ways, Caleb is twice the man you'll ever be."

The connotation was clear, dripping off of Emma's tongue like poison, but for once, Jonah didn't look cowed by her words. He let her go, sensing she'd at least run out of the desire to attack Emma, but kept close by, hovering at Emma's shoulder.

"Well," Jonah went on, ignoring Emma's outburst, "I can tell you what's wrong with her, Beth. You being pregnant just solidifies your place in the pack, doesn't it? There's no way Emma can run around trying to figure out at a way to backstab Devon and oust you when you're pregnant with the alpha's baby. So, she panicked."

"Now you're a therapist?" Emma said, scoffing, but it was apparent the assessment had hit close to home. She pushed herself off of the bench. "It's a big mistake, Dev. Trusting her. Changing the whole pack to make sure she fits in. How do you think the pack feels about you trying to shoehorn them into the vision your angel has for them? You've neutered them. They know it. I don't need to backstab because you've done it to yourself. You've lost us, our brother."

With that cryptic remark, she swept out of the garden, shifting into her wolf form and taking off down the path in a blur of tawny fur. Beth was still digesting Emma's words, staring at the place where she'd vanished, when Devon came and wrapped his arm around her from behind. She leaned back against him, tilting her head up for a kiss.

"We need to talk about this. About a lot of things. I'll be inside getting cleaned up, okay?" Beth wasn't upset with Devon, but she needed time alone to process everything that had happened, and to figure out what it meant for her going forward. For her, and her baby. It wasn't just herself she had to think of now.

Jonah joined her, her jailor, and her bodyguard, and they headed back inside. She could sense Devon's eyes on their backs. He'd be beating himself up. She knew that about him now, how he saw everything that went wrong as a sign of his own weakness, instead of someone else's issue. But this wasn't the time to try and console him, not until she got her own feet under her.

"You're a good man, Jo," Beth said, squeezing his arm when he left her at her room. "Don't pay Emma any mind. She only wants to hurt you."

Jonah scratched his chin, giving Beth a sad smile. "She's good at it, but I know she only does it to get under my skin. She likes to jab people and see if they jump."

Beth hesitated in the doorway, though the shower was calling her name. "Why do you like her? No offense, but she seems awful in pretty much every way apart from her looks."

Jonah laughed. "Yeah, she's gorgeous, but the truth is there are a lot of sides to Em. She hasn't been showing much of those other ones lately. I'm afraid you bring out the worst in her."

"So, she was nice before I got here?" Beth asked, doubtfully.

"Let's go with nicer. Nice is a stretch," Jonah said, settling down in front of Beth's door to read. "Hey, are you okay? That was a hard fall, and you've got the baby and all. Should I have a doctor come by?"

Beth shook her head, rubbing her still flat stomach. "I'm alright, thank you. Just my hip and my pride took a blow, but that pride has been taking a beating for a while now. It's resilient."

She shut the door and shed her clothes, dropping them into the laundry bin before starting up the shower. Her face and arms were streaked with dirt, somehow, and her hip was already turning colors. Beth stepped into the hot water and closed her eyes, letting it wash away the day.

What would Devon choose? She was his mate, the mother of his child, but Emma was his sister. Could she ask him to choose between them? It was an impossible choice. Even if Devon did choose Beth over Emma, would he ever forgive her for having to give up his sister?

Digging the dirt out from under her nails, Beth couldn't help but turn her hand over and look at the palm that had reached out and struck Emma. It had been warranted, she'd thought, at the time, but now she regretted it. There had been better ways to deal with the situation.

She smoothed conditioner into her lengths, the scent of lavender filling the shower, and twisted her hair into a clip. When she turned around, Devon was there on the other side of the glass shower door.

"Can I join you?" He asked. "I knocked, but I don't think you could hear me."

Beth realized she'd frozen upon seeing him. There was something about being caught in the shower, fully nude, that made her feel more vulnerable than if he'd pulled her clothing off piece by piece. But she wanted him, needed him there.

"Yes," she said, pushing the door open for him.

He yanked his shirt off overhead in one smooth motion, and Beth's mouth went dry, tracing the downy line of fur that stretched from his navel down. She busied herself with rinsing her hair, but couldn't keep her eyes away when he kicked his pants off, and his briefs a moment later.

Always, her anger took the backstage when her desire rose. She couldn't hold both at once, that aching need for him consumed everything, even common sense. When he stepped into the shower, she moved into his open arms.

"Is the lavender working?" He murmured into her hair. "Jonah recommended we buy that scent, said it"s supposed to be calming."

Beth laughed. "Somehow, I think it takes more than aromatherapy to keep someone calm when kidnapped. I'm afraid it's not quite doing the job today, either. My sister-in-law hates me is a little above lavender's pay grade."

His hands slid up her sides, so large they nearly engulfed her. He tugged even tighter against him and she felt safe as always in his arms.

"I'll find a way to deal with her," Devon said, exhaling the words. He sounded exhausted.

"Can we talk about it another time?" Head against his chest, she closed her eyes and let her fingers move blindly down his front.

She found his cock half-hard and dragged her fingers over it. They had problems to deal with, and Beth was tormented by the decision that Devon had yet to make. However, for the moment, her body's desire was clear.

He inhaled, surprised. "Are you sure?"

His fingers wrapped in the hair at the base of her neck and tugged, tilting her head back to look at him. He liked to read her that way, when she couldn't look away, and he knew her answer from her expression alone.

In a moment, his cock was achingly hard and warm in her hands. Breathless, she slipped from his grasp to her knees, tasting the precum that beaded at the head. Devon leaned back against the wall, hands on either side of her head. She looked up and found him staring at her, enraptured, pupils blown.

She lost herself in the pleasure of it, of undoing him with her mouth and her tongue and her fingers. Everything but him faded away.

Later, as they lay in bed draped with their towels, she propped herself on her elbow to look at him. Eyes closed, his light brown lashes shadowed his cheeks. Sunset was falling outside, and he was bathed in its glow. She wanted to capture the image of him just as he was then, and hold it forever, to keep it no matter what came next for them both.

It was a special kind of torment to find love with an enemy. Mistrust does not easily yield to faith, and the thread of it ran through everything, even then. When all of your loved ones are at odds with one another, how can you maintain your closeness? Everything conspired to pull them apart. At times, even her own heart begged for her to flee.

She couldn't predict him, even though she could read him, had grown familiar with his expressions and his mannerisms. There was still so much she didn't know about him, yet she was his, and he was hers.

"I can practically hear you thinking," he said, cracking one eye open. "Want to talk about it now, or do you need to stew on it some more?"

She didn't want to talk about it and spoil the moment, but it was only going to keep her awake if she kept it to herself.

"Do you ever feel like the world doesn't want us to be together? That each time we overcome some obstacle, it'll find another to throw at us?"

He opened both eyes now and folded his hands behind his head. "I think that someday, we'll look back at these hard times and they'll feel like a distant memory. I don't think it'll be this way forever. We're going to make it through, the three of us together. A family."

Beth bit down on the corner of her lip. Emma's shove in the garden hadn't done more than bruise her, and if Beth hadn't been pregnant, she would have brushed the incident off, added it to the list of Emma's antics. Now, with the baby growing inside of her, she wasn't able to shake it off as easily. There was more at stake, more than just herself to protect.

"Maybe I should go away for a while," Beth said, watching his face as her words landed. "I know you'll do everything you can to keep me safe, I don't doubt that, but she's completely unpredictable. She's your sister, I get that. I don't want to put you between a rock and a hard place, so maybe, for now, it'd be better if I just found a space of my own."

Devon sat up. "Go where? Back to the Rosewoods? With a White Winter baby? My baby?"

"Not back to the Rosewoods. Somewhere, I could be alone, away from these pack politics. I'd return once the baby was born."

But Devon was shaking his head, his wavy hair swaying. "I'd lose my mind if you weren't nearby, never knowing if you were in danger. Please, Beth, don't even talk about it. I can't stand the idea of losing you both. What happened to figuring this out together?"

The heartbroken pleading silenced Beth's arguments, though she had a million of them at the tip of her tongue.

"Okay, I'll stay," she told him, smoothing the wrinkles from his brow with the swipe of her finger. "We'll make this work. Together."

As they lay there, Devon asleep, his breathing steady as a metronome, Beth stared up at the ceiling. The fan circled overhead, a vulture waiting for her to close her eyes. She had locked the door to the bedroom. Still, every creak made her jump, her heart leaping to her throat.

Devon wanted her to stay, and hearing her own words repeated back to her, her insistence that they sort through everything together, kept her chained. But as she watched Devon's chest rise and fall in his sleep she thought again of how little she knew about the man sleeping next to her. After all, he had never mentioned a brother. What had Emma meant, that Devon had lost them their brother?

She wracked her mind for clues, but Devon had never mentioned another sibling to her. And how would Devon's choice of mate cost them their brother? By the time she fell asleep, her head ached from worrying.